Coronavirus: It's Inevitable

...that I'm going to get it. (OK, that's too panicky, because some years I don't take the flu shot and don't come down with the flu.)

On Wednesday we learned of the first U.S. case of coronavirus that cannot be traced to persons who have been to China or have been in contact with a known carrier. [bold added]

(Sacramento Bee)

A Solano County resident has tested positive for the new coronavirus but had not recently traveled to any foreign country where the virus is spreading and had not had contact with any people with confirmed cases, public health officials said Wednesday.

"...the patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento on Feb. 19 after being transferred from another hospital. The patient was already intubated, on a ventilator and “given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to the email, written by David Lubarsky, UC Davis vice chancellor of human health services, and Brad Simmons, interim chief executive of UC Davis Medical Center.

...The CDC said it is possible that the source of the infection will be determined with further interviews with the patient. Public health officials are now attempting to track where the person may have gone in the community and who he or she may have interacted with.

The case is the 60th in the United States, and the 28th in California. The bulk of the infections have been in passengers who were evacuated from a cruise ship in Japan and quarantined at U.S. military facilities, including Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, in Solano County. The Bay Area county is halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento. It has a population of about 500,000.

The presence of Travis AFB in Solano County, where the patient lives, is too much of a coincidence to ignore, and I expect that eventually the CDC will figure out how it was transmitted. But it also probably won't matter, since the virus by then will have escaped into the community.

So, protect yourself as best you can by handwashing, limiting person-to-person interactions as much as possible, and increasing your odds of recovery by raising the level of your personal health through diet, exercise, and sleep.